Biographical Note

Eilis Ni Dhuibhne was born in Dublin in 1954. She was educated at Scoil Bhride, Scoil Chaitriona, and University College Dublin (UCD). She studied Pure English for her BA. In 1976 she was conferred with an M.Phil in Medieval Studies (Old English, Old Irish, Folklore). She then wrote her doctoral thesis on a Chaucerian tale in international oral tradition and was conferred with a Ph D in 1982.  In 1978-9 she spent a year as a graduate student at the University of Copenhagen.

Eilis published her first short story, 'Green Fuse', in David Marcus's 'New Irish Writing' page in the Irish Press in 1974, when she was an undergraduate student, and contributed many stories to that page during the following ten years. When she completed her doctorate in 1982, she began to write books and her first, Blood and Water, was published in 1988.  Since then she has written several collections of short stories, many novels, books for children, poetry, and plays for stage and radio. She has also worked as a script writer for RTE and TG 4. Her work has won many awards – including the Stewart Parker award for Drama, the Butler Award (American Association of Irish Studies) for Prose, several Oireachtas Awards for novels in Irish,  and three Bisto Awards for Children’s Literature.  Her novel, The Dancers Dancing, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and her collection of short stories, The Pale Gold of Alaska, was selected as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times.

Her books have been translated to German, Czech, Italian, Scots Gaelic, and her short stories to those and many other languages including French, Spanish, Slovenian, Croatian, and Russian.

Eilis worked as a librarian in the National Library of Ireland for many years, in the Photographic Archive, the Manuscripts Department, and the Education and Outreach section, where she curated several exhibitions, including the Yeats Exhibition. She has also taught Creative Writing at the Irish Writers’ Centre, Listowel Writers’ Week, and Trinity College, where she was Writer Fellow in 2005. She is now Writer Fellow in UCD, where she teaches on the MA in Creative Writing.

She has lectured and given readings in many countries throughout the world, including Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Croatia, Sweden, Scotland, Wales, England, Canada, the United States and Australia.